Grey’s Recap: So This Is How Maggie Is Being Ushered Out of Grey Sloan? — Plus, a Target Is Painted on [Spoiler]

Grey’s Anatomy’s big case-of-the-week Thursday involved a bull rider who’d been well and truly stomped. But Winston might have felt like he’d been kicked just as hard as the patient when he learned that estranged wife Maggie was contemplating taking a position at the Heart Center of Chicago. Was the stage set for Kelly McCreary’s exit? Read on…

Team Grey’s Drops Spoilers Galore About Season 19’s End — and Beyond!

View List

‘THERE ARE NO WRONG ANSWERS HERE’ | As the Chandra Wilson-directed “Cowgirls Don’t Cry” began, Maggie and Winston were singing one another’s praises to a marriage counselor. Or trying to, anyway. Maggie somehow took her husband saying that he appreciated how hard she works as a diss. Elsewhere, Ben, worried about his wife’s safety at the clinic, drove Bailey to work. Mika discovered that she was too underweight to make 75 bucks selling her plasma and was reduced to eating donuts out of the garbage. At Grey Sloan, Levi learned that Carlos had finished his gig in Seattle and had moved on to his next location. Simone awkwardly asked Jules to be her maid of honor. Pass, said Millin, suggesting Mika instead. (Um, how well does the job pay?) Teddy was stunned to discover that Maggie was being poached; the article on the partial-heart transplant had made her an extra-hot commodity. Finally, Georgia the Bull Rider was choppered in.

Related Stories

Fired GH Star Ingo Rademacher Loses COVID Vaccine Lawsuit Against ABC

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, With Home Edit Duo as Hosts, Eyed at ABC

Back in Maggie and Winston’s counseling session, she expressed excitement about possibly relocating to Chicago. “I’ve already moved across the country for you once,” he pointed out, adding that when he’d volunteered to change specialties for her, she’d lost all respect for him. Needless to say, it was not going well. When Maggie was paged and announced that she had to go, Winston majorly pouted… until his wife pointed out that she was on trauma call. D’oh! Soon, she made her way to the hospital to consult on Georgia’s case. Maggie felt that Amelia should operate first to make sure that the patient didn’t wind up paralyzed. However risky the surgery was, Georgia’s parents wanted her to have it. “Save our daughter’s ability to ride.” In the O.R., Amelia asked why Maggie hadn’t told her she’d been receiving job offers. Maggie didn’t have to move to achieve whatever she wanted to, Amelia said. She need only ask Bailey and Richard for funding.

‘CAN WE KEEP ALL NONESSENTIAL CHATTER TO A MINIMUM?’ | In the O.R., Maggie made Amelia and Owen tense. On one hand, it was like Pierce had a vise on the room. On the other, wouldn’t we all like to think that somebody was taking our surgery as seriously as Maggie was taking Georgia’s? Suddenly, the hematoma that was also an issue for the patient exploded, and despite the fact that her spine was exposed, her surgery had to be taken over right then, right there by Maggie. (Words you never want to hear: “Get the saw ready.”) Miraculously, Georgia pulled through, but Maggie and Amelia wanted to discuss the bull-riding with Mom. The doctors assumed that the girl was being pushed into the dangerous “sport.” But, in fact, Georgia was addicted to it. It was her passion. Maggie could relate. She, too, seemed to feel like everyone was telling her not to love the thing that she loved. When Georgia awakened, Maggie explained how well she understood what she was going through and begged for the chance to safeguard the kid’s future.

‘YOU SCREW UP ONCE, YOU’RE A SCREW-UP FOREVER’ | In the ER, Richard treated a man named Seth who complained of abdominal pain — and wasn’t too keen on being a teachable moment for Simone and Lucas. What was really going on, it at first seemed, was that he was going from hospital to hospital to get prescriptions for painkillers. Only Lucas suspected that what they were dealing with wasn’t addiction — and reminded Simone that he hadn’t listened to his gut with Tessa, and look how that had turned out. So Griffith relented and had his back. But when Levi discovered that they hadn’t discharged Seth as ordered, he barked at them. Nonetheless, Simone and Lucas disobeyed, and off Richard’s words of wisdom about X-rays, they deduced that something really was wrong with Seth. At the same time, Bailey counseled Levi that he might want to take a different approach with the residents. He had wanted to be the residency program’s vagina, after all. Turned out, Seth had a toothpick stuck inside him! Riding high off their success, Simone… oh, no, kid. No, no, no. She asked Lucas to be her “man of honor.” Seriously? Just then, Schmitt, taking a different tact with the youngsters, invited them out for drinks at Joe’s. There, Mika asked Taryn if the bar needed an extra tender, and the ex-resident said she’d put in a good word for her.

‘WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR ME TO REST?’ | Jo insisted to Link that she was sick, but he could tell that she wasn’t sick-sick. She just badly needed a day off. So he took one, too, and brought her latte and tiny donuts. Why, she wondered, was it so hard for her to rest? He didn’t know, but he did know why he found it difficult. When he’d had cancer, he’d spent a lot of time in bed listening to his parents fight, so he associated rest with misery. Jo countered that he only felt safe when he was taking care of somebody else, like he’d learned to do with his parents. That was when he felt comfortable enough to relax. Sweetly, he then ventured that maybe she couldn’t rest because she’d never had somebody who made her feel safe enough to rest. (At last, progress in their relationship.)

In other developments, after seeing a woman who refused a chest X-ray because she couldn’t afford anything more than antibiotics, Mika pleaded with Teddy to let her get proper care pro bono. No dice, said the chief. The woman insisted that she couldn’t miss work to fill out forms to obtain free care and yelled at Mika that she was a doctor with a cushy salary, she didn’t understand what it was like to be so poor. Mika set the woman straight and convinced her to get treatment, come what may. As the episode concluded, Maggie reminded Winston that he’d abandoned her during their first Zoom with his family. He’d shown her who he was at that point — she should have believed him. He protected himself no matter what. Their marriage could survive a job in Chicago, she said. But he didn’t seem to want it to survive. He’d already taken his love and retreated.

“It isn’t your heart” that she disrespects, Maggie told her husband. “It’s your cowardice.” So hell yeah, she was going to Chicago. Winston could stay there and pretend that he’d been abandoned (and this photo certainly makes it look like he was). But he’d never sell that version of their story to her. (How on earth could she then ask him in the scenes from next week to go with her?) Jo admitted to Link was she was feeling better and looked at him dreamily. Jules confessed that she was turned on by Blue’s staunch anti-animal cruelty stance. (Why wouldn’t she be? Compassion is sexy!) And Ben found Miranda’s picture slapped on every car windshield in the lot. Written on the pieces of paper: the words “baby killer” and their home address and phone number!

So, what did you think of “Cowgirls Don’t Cry”? Hit the comments.